They opened both doors and stepped outside. He didn’t have to tell them not to shut them. He turned to the woman beside him.
“You too,” he said. “ Real quiet. Are we clear about that?”
“Yes.”
He watched them move to the driver’s side of the Chevy and saw Ray open the door and duck in, Billy a little in front of him watching the house and already jittering like he had the shits, looking back at Ray as though willing him to hurry. He heard the engine sputter and die and sputter again through the still night air and thought, damn! just as the living room window flew open and the shotgun appeared and let fly and the Chevy’s windshield exploded. He saw Billy hit the ground and start crawling toward the back of the car, Ray nowhere in sight.
“Get outa there! Goddammit! I’ll blow your goddamn ears off!”
An old man’s voice. One very pissed off old man.
The shotgun sparked and roared again and punched a hole in the grille. The car shuddered and the hood flew up as he fired a third time and then the left front tire was down and hissing. He saw Ray bail out of the seat and stumble for cover toward the rear of the Chevy and crouch beside Billy.
“Aw, shit,” he said.
He put his arm out the window and fired at the same time the old man did and this time the blast kicked the hood off its hinges entirely and back against what was left of the windshield. The bastard’s sure doing a fuck of a job on his own car, he thought. Doesn’t seem to give a fuck either. Only now he’d discovered that there was somebody in the station wagon firing back at him, and Emil saw the shotgun glint and shift in the moonlight.
“ Hit it, Maggie!”
He got off three fast ones toward the window and saw wood fly off the sill as she slammed her foot to the gas pedal and sent the car screeching into a turn behind the Chevy, spraying dirt and gravel as the goddamn woman beside him tried to haul herself over the seat, making for the open rear doors so that he had to reach for the back of her blouse and grab hold of her with one hand and fire at the farmer with the other and the farmer was shooting back. He felt the impact thump and quiver through the right rear body of the wagon. Ray and Billy were up and running for the wide-open backseat doors as she pulled the car through the full 180- degree turn, getting them the hell out of there, yes! and picking up speed, the two of them racing for the car and catching it right and left just as the shotgun roared a final time and they finally slammed the doors.
“Whew! That was one single-minded guy,” Ray said.
“Disreputable,” said Billy.
The detective-the bigger of the two, Frommer his name was-was seated on the couch flipping through his notepad, frowning. Alan sat across from him on tin edge of the armchair and waited. He heard the toilet flush and finally the smaller cop came out of the hath room so that then they could begin.
“What we’ve got here’s kind of unusual, Mr. Laymon,” Frommer said. “Three out-of-staters and a local girl.”
“Why unusual?”
“The boys turn up easy on the computer. Emil Rothert, Ray Short and Billy Ripper. Rothert and Short originally from Dead River, Maine. High school buddies, what little they had of it. Mostly they had Juvenile. Assault, arson, skin the neighbor’s cat, that kind of thing. Graduated to armed robbery, rape and aggravated assault. No convictions. Both did time in Jersey-annul robbery again. And we figure they linked up with Rip per there because next we got all three of ’em booked for auto theft in Bristol, Connecticut, charges dismissed This Ripper’s a total fruitcake. Went after his mom eight years ago with a straight razor and damn near killed her. Lady sixty-six years old. Imagine that? Bui the real puzzler’s this Lane woman.”
“How come?”
“Let’s just say the consensus is that she ain’t got all her cookies in the jar,” the smaller cop said. Frommer shot him a look that went from hot to cold. Then he shrugged.
“It’s true,” he said. “I wish I had a buck for every time she’s called the station with some lame news or another. First she says she’s being followed by some guy in a white Mercedes. Then she’s getting obscene calls every night and she can’t be sure but she thinks the caller’s a woman. She can tell by the breathing. She calls us at least a dozen times on this one. Then somebody breaks in and cuts the wire to her window fan in the dead of summer. Then somebody breaks in again and cuts her phone line. Finally somebody sets fire to her garage.
“Well, there was a fire. Burned up an old sleeping bag and some old clothes and papers. We got no proof but two guesses who set the thing. She was all right I guess until her boyfriend ran off and dumped her. Since then, whacko.”
“So you’re saying…”
“So I’m saying we don’t know if she’s with ’em or against ’em. We figure she wasn’t in on the killing. The driver who called it in said their car was off the road trying to kiss a tree. But other than that? Could easily be the one as the other. So the point is..
He knew what the point was. “Jesus,” he said.
“Right. We could be talking three bad guys and two hostages, or three bad guys, one hostage and one crazy. And I got to be honest with you. Either way it could get very nasty here.”
They’re up against it now, she thought. The police band had them made. Not just the car but them. She didn’t know whether it made her feel frightened or elated. Maybe both.
“… suspects identified as Emil Rothert, thirty-four, white male, six feet two inches, two hundred fifteen pounds… Ray Short, thirty-four, white male, five feet eleven inches, one hundred seventy pounds… William Grant Ripper, thirty-one, white male, five feet nine inches, one hundred forty pounds… ”
Emil reached over and turned it off.
"I don’t like this,” Ray said. “This ain’t good at all.”
"We’re fine. All we need’s a car.”
His voice was different though. Maybe she was seeing the first cracks in the great Emil Rothert bravado. She could hope so.
"They got the names, Emil, they got the plate number, the registration…”
"Which is why we need the car.”
"And maybe here she comes,” said Marion.
Headlights gleamed in the rearview mirror.
"Go for it, Mags,” Emil said.
Marion got out and slammed the door and Emil inched across and locked it. His look said she had better not move, locked or unlocked. He turned and offered Marion’s. 22 to Ray and Billy.
“Who wants it?”
"I’ll take it,” Billy said. “Thank you very much.”
“Everybody down.”
In the mirror above she could see Marion waving frantically at the car’s approach and she thought how he’d been doing exactly the same thing a few hours ago, just looking for a lift and then watched the car slow and stop directly behind them, the driver, a man in jacket and tie, leaning out and Marion walking over and leaning down, pointing back at the wagon, the man opening his door and getting out and his car’s courtesy light blinking on so that she could see that there were other her people in the car too, a woman in the front passenger seat and two smaller figures in back, Marion gesturing with fake exasperation as they walked toward the wagon, heard their footsteps approach and stop and the man say what the…? in surprise as the two left-side doors swung open and Emil and Billy stepped out. She sat up. The man’s eyes were going back and forth from gun to gun.
“Oh god. Oh, Jesus. Listen, please… my family. Whatever you want. Anything you want. Please…” “Sir,” Emil said. “We won’t hurt your family. Just walk back to your car nice and slow. We’re not gonna hurt anybody. Just take it easy, now, okay, sir?”
The man was clearly terrified but he did as he was told, turned and started walking. Emil, Marion and Billy followed.
Emil called over his shoulder, “Hey, Ray!”
“Yeah?”